by Eric Warren
CAUSALITY – QUANTUM GATE BOOK 5
Copyright © 2019 by Eric C. Warren All rights reserved.
This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
No part of this publication may be reproduced in whole or in part, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, by any means electronic, mechanical, printing, photocopying, recording, chiseling into stone, or otherwise, without the written permission from the publisher, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review. For information regarding permission contact the publisher.
Cover Design by © Sabercore23 Art
Content Editor Tiffany Shand
Table of Contents
Also Available
PROLOGUE
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-One
Twenty-Two
Twenty-Three
Twenty-Four
Twenty-Five
Twenty-Six
Twenty-Seven
Twenty-Eight
Twenty-Nine
Thirty
Thirty-One
Thirty-Two
Thirty-Three
Thirty-Four
Thirty-Five
Thirty-Six
Thirty-Seven
Thirty-Eight
Thirty-Nine
Forty
Epilogue
Interview With the Author
Sneak Preview of CASPIAN'S FORTUNE
Acknowledgements
About the Author
The Quantum Gate Series:
PROGENY Quantum Gate Book 0
SINGULAR Quantum Gate Book 1
DUALITY Quantum Gate Book 2
TRIALITY Quantum Gate Book 3
DISPARITY Quantum Gate Book 4
CAUSALITY Quantum Gate Book 5
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All things end. Not always in the way we want,
but they end just the same.
-Unknown
PROLOGUE
Arista needed to come back to life.
And yet, she couldn’t. Not only had she lost any possible way home, she’d lost the one thing that made her special. Now, she was just like everyone else: small, weak, and vulnerable. And those feelings crowded in on her like an encroaching darkness, threatening to stamp out any light in her life. How was she supposed to move on after this?
Arista rolled over, taking the weight off her artificial arm. She usually slept without it, but since the accident in the subway she hadn’t wanted to take it off. It was her last connection to her own world, a last bit of her real mother and taking it off felt like a betrayal. What if she removed it and it wouldn’t go back on? Or what if it wouldn’t come off? These were nothing but irrational thoughts her logical mind recognized, but they didn’t stop her from feeling the despair and panic anyway.
She’d holed herself up in this room for two days already, intent on keeping everyone at arm’s length. Arista didn’t want to talk, she didn’t want to be comforted. She’d been the one who had screwed up and destroyed what little chance she and Frees had at getting back to their own universe. If only she’d been faster, if she hadn’t been so insistent on Echo telling her what she needed to know they could have stopped Charlie from getting back through the gate. But no, she had to know. And that knowledge cost her everything.
Arista sat up, brushing the dirty-blonde hair from her face and rubbing her temples with both her human fingers and her artificial ones. The sparse room was dark as it had no windows; it had functioned as a storage room before David had turned this building into his own personal workshop and home. The only light in the room streamed in from under the door frame. She’d been in darkness so long her eyes had gotten used to the lack of light.
The faint smell of oil and rubber still permeated the air, despite the fact the room hadn’t been used in any mechanical capacity for years. On the far wall was a 3-d display television—which had remained in the off position—sitting on an old dresser which had been filled with clothes for her to use. She knew because she’d peeked inside a few times, but never bothered to change more than her underwear. Sure, her clothes were dirty, but they fit her and her mood, and she wasn’t about to go out there traipsing around in a sun dress.
An old rug covered most of the concrete floor and she stared at the simple patterns woven within. What was she going to do? Without a Quantum Gate to access she and Frees were stuck in this strange alternate universe where machines never overthrew humans and the humans were allowed to multiply and grow unchecked. And humanity had made a mess of this world, separating themselves into classes of the super-rich and everyone else. In New York, the super-rich lived on the walled-off island of Manhattan, a glittering jewel of a city full of wonderful technology and abundance. But outside the wall, here in Queens and the surrounding boroughs, life was a lot harder. Resources were scarcer. People lived in poverty and barely managed to make ends meet. From what she’d learned from David and Blu was things weren’t better anywhere else on the planet. The rich had set up designated districts in which they lived and thrived. Everyone else who lived around them only worked to maintain their extravagant lifestyles. It was all so different and strange. At least in her world the machines were all equal to each other, even if they had managed to wipe out most of the human race. And the humans, though much smaller in number, were more focused, if not just as lethal as the machines. But they were united in their cause of returning themselves to the dominant life form on the planet. None of this class-system nonsense.
Arista scoffed and pulled her legs back, swinging them over the edge of the bed. She pulled her boots on and sat, hunched over on the edge. The murmur of voices permeated her door; Blu’s optimistic lilt reaching her even in here. Blu had been the one good thing about this world. In her, Arista had found real kinship she hadn’t found with another human before. Blu’s father was an alternate universe version of her own biological dad, though a lot more palpable than the man she’d watched die.
The fact was, she couldn’t stay in this room and hide forever. She had to make her way out eventually, even if for no other reason than to talk to Frees about what they were going to do with their lives now that they were stuck here.
With a grunt Arista pushed herself off the mattress and rubbed her temples a few more times for good measure, focusing on stamping down the encroaching headache. She reached over, shutting her eyes, and flipped the switch for the small lamp beside the bed. Florescent white illuminated the room and she squinted as her eyes adjusted. She tried not to think about the lack of information being fed directly to her brain from the Device, which had been damaged in the subway. There was no telling if it would ever work again. Had it been functioning she would know the luminosity of the room as well as the ambient temperature of her body and her autonomic functions by now.
But there was nothing.
Sighing, she made her way out of the room and down t
he short hallway, heading for the voices.
“—she’ll make it her top priority,” Frees was saying.
Her ears perked up and she leaned against the doorframe to the room. “What’s my top priority?” She didn’t like what she saw on Frees’ face—some kind of mixture of anguish and pity—so she turned to the only other person in the room. David seemed to be in better shape than she was despite spending three days in the local hospital. He was a tall man, with a mess of brown hair and glasses, both features conspicuously missing from her version. As usual he stood beside his workstation, but when he looked at her his face betrayed no emotion. “You’re back,” Arista added. “How are you feeling?”
He remained impassive. “I could ask you the same thing.”
She shrugged, not wanting to draw any more attention to herself than necessary. “Fine. I guess. How’s Jennings?”
“Running around like a junglefowl missing its head. Trying to clean up your mess,” David said with a small smirk.
Arista dropped her head. She hadn’t meant to cause so much trouble for Jennings, but because he was a police officer and their ally, he was the only one qualified to be the public face of what had happened in the subway. Her own face was still out there from when Echo had tried to have her arrested which meant she couldn’t even get medical attention. Not that she could have anyway; as soon as they would have performed an x-ray they would have seen the Device embedded inside her skull and the prosthetic arm, both of which were illegal in this universe. “Tell him thank you,” she said, her voice small.
“You can tell him yourself. He’ll be by later to deliver the documents you need to sign,” David said, turning back to his workstation.
She perked up and raised an eyebrow at Frees, who shrugged in response. “Documents?”
“For your windfall,” Frees said.
Oh god, the windfall. Echo had been serious about bequeathing Arista her personal fortune. Since Echo had died in the subway the wheels on her money had started to move. The last thing Arista wanted to deal with was a bunch of dirty money from an oligarch. “I don’t want it.” She rolled her eyes. “Give it to charity or something. Help the people of greater New York. I don’t care.”
Frees stood a bit straighter and raised his artificial eyebrows. “You might when you see what David is proposing.”
Arista sucked in a deep breath, preparing herself. Obviously things hadn’t ground to a halt just because she’d decided to remove herself from the world for a couple of days. Frees couldn’t seriously think they were going to take that money and live on Manhattan, did he? She wanted nothing to do with the place. It was nothing more than a warning sign, a beacon not of hope and aspiration, but of greed and avarice. But she had to at least hear the idea before rejecting it. She pushed herself off the doorframe and approached them. “Let’s see it.”
David chuckled, his shoulders rising and falling as he glanced over them to her. “There’s nothing to see. Not yet. It’s all in Frees’ head.”
She furrowed her brow. “What’s in Frees’ head?”
Frees walked over, standing close to her. Immediately she felt better, as if just being in his presence was comforting. She supposed that was natural, after everything they’d been through. And the fact he was the only other person on the planet from the same universe as her. As she looked at him, his face was a mixture of worry and hope. “We have to try. Even if it doesn’t work, we have to at least try.”
“Try what?” she asked, her curiosity piqued.
Frees smiled. It was a nice smile. A pleasant smile. “To build a new gate.”
ONE
“Arista!”
She peered over the dashboard at the silver-haired teenager waving at her from the entrance to the garage. Arista pressed the descend pedal in the black van, the van itself dropping down easily. It was much more responsive than the last one. David and Blu had lost their original van in their final confrontation with Charlie before he escaped back to her universe, and she had replaced it for them. As soon as the digital ink was dry on the paperwork bequeathing her Echo Dante’s fortune she transferred the funds and purchased a brand new Rosoko Vanette, complete with full flying capabilities. It was the least she could do, and turned out to be the first in a long line of purchases for others.
“Hurry!” Blu yelled as the van hovered inches above the pavement underneath and inched forward into the garage. David had refused to move out of his workshop, despite the questionable neighborhood, insistent that the dark and semi-claustrophobic space helped him think. Thanks to David’s hospitality Frees and Arista had set themselves up in the guest room and adjoining corridor. Since Frees didn’t need to sleep he would often work during the nights while Arista took refuge in the same room she’d been offered when they’d first arrived. She was gone most days which meant he could either use the space or make his way over to the assembly building. Either way, the arrangement had worked so far.
They’d talked about moving out, but with the security concerns Arista had decided it wasn’t the best idea. It turned out Echo’s decision to give Arista most of her money hadn’t gone over too well with some of the people in Manhattan. Not to mention every person who knew where she lived considered she might be an easy target for burglary. Fortunately, the first time someone tried it they ended up in the hospital for a week thanks to Arista’s artificial arm and hand. She had to admit, she’d been proud of herself for not killing the man.
Her minor celebrity status had been something of deep discussion in the wealthy circles; since Arista was an unregistered bionic it had led to a lot of debate about bionics and their respective rights in this world. It was her hope to affect some change for the better if she had to stay in this universe.
“What’s going on?” she yelled back, pulling the van into its parking spot inside the massive garage.
The slender teenager bounced up and down on the balls of her feet, a characteristic which matched her bubbly and often easily excitable personality. “You’re not going to believe this, come quick!” She turned and dashed off toward her room as Arista stepped out of the van, shutting all its systems down. Technically she and Blu weren’t related, but since they shared a father across universes, Arista had made up her mind they were related. She wasn’t going to let a little thing like an alternate universe keep her from having a real family for once.
Arista took off after Blu, weaving a familiar path through David’s piles of spent equipment. The man collected all sorts of junk, though he’d never see it that way. It was all useful in some fashion and she had to admit he had an eye for engineering. A skill she didn’t possess. Ever since Frees had suggested they try to build their own Quantum Gate, David had been in charge of the project, working out the logistics and putting an engineering and construction team together. The pool of available candidates willing to work was large, and because Arista could afford to bankroll the entire project, they’d had little trouble getting it off the ground.
She reached Blu’s door, following the girl inside. She was seated at her personal terminal, a stack of six holo monitors, arranged in an upside-down pyramid that displayed nothing but random code she couldn’t translate.
“What’s so important?” she asked, almost out of breath.
Blu turned to her, smiling. It was a true smile like she was holding in the world’s biggest secret and just couldn’t wait to let it out. “I figured it out,” she said, then covered her mouth with her hands as if she was embarrassed. She dropped them for just a moment before adding, “It’s done. It’s actually done.” She clapped her hands back over her mouth again, but still her smile was visible from underneath.
Arista couldn’t help but smile in return. “Don’t tell me you mapped it. The entire multiverse?”
She dropped her hands. “Well,” Blu said, rolling her eyes but the smile never left her face. “Not the entire multiverse. But I got our little corner of it. I’ve figured out exactly where you need to go to get back home. The coordinates
are right here.” She pointed to one of her monitors.
Arista only saw code. “I don’t…”
“Oh.” Blu tapped the desk in front of her and a series of numbers came up. “Sorry, I’ve been looking at this so long it’s all I see anymore.”
When Frees had first suggested this idea she’d thought he was crazy. He wanted to rebuild something it took her father—the other David—fifteen years to develop, and he wanted to do it in only a few weeks? Quickly enough so Arista could get back to her other parents, the ones who had actually raised her, who had been captured by the humans of that universe and subjected to some kind of unknown experience. Fortunately, with the assistance of Jill, Frees’ old energy supplier, they’d managed to get them away from the humans but since then Arista had no clue what had happened to them. Did Jill still have them somewhere? Or had something else happened? Regardless, it all stopped mattering four weeks ago.
But that hadn’t stopped Frees’ determination to get her back there. He’d argued that if he transcribed everything he knew about the gates from his data download from Hogo-sha, combined with this David’s engineering knowhow they might be able to build one that could work. The only remaining problem would be finding out where to go once it was built.
That’s where Blu came in. Something of a technical wunderkind on her own, she managed to figure out how to differentiate their personal quantum signatures from those of people living in this universe and build that into a database. Then she set out to map it.
Arista had thought she’d been crazy. But it turned out she was wrong.
Arista couldn’t help her eyes flicking to the date in the bottom right corner of one of the screens.
“Well?” Blu asked. “Aren’t you excited? This means we’re one step closer!”
“Yeah,” Arista said, trying to muster true excitement for the accomplishment. It was a huge step forward. She only wished it had come a month sooner.
